Alright. I am continuing the exploration and and gaining the insight of what these 10 different types of intimacy are. Last week, we talked about emotional. This week, we're talking about intellectual intimacy, and we're gonna look and see what is it exactly. And is it a real type of intimacy, or is there is it just some, you know, psycho mumbo jumbo that someone someone made up just to feel important? Well, we're gonna be talking about that this week on episode 243 of the relaxed male.
This is the relaxed male, a show that comes to you each week helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can live their life on their terms. Join the host certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Amen. Hello and welcome to the relax mail. I'm your host, Brian, and I am a certified men's coach who assist men who are just neck deep in the suffering of their life. These are the men who are struggling with their relationships, trying to find a way to make their bride happy, yet they are just making themselves more miserable in the process. What do you do? How do you change your approach to your marriage? Why is this sacred institute so full of strife and tension?
Join me, and let's discover how you can actually relax, have the marriage you wanna have, and let's see how we can get this done. I am been driving or driving. We're starting off on a good foot today, aren't we? We I've been diving into the different types of intimacy. And the reason why it got me interested in this is because I came across a book called 6 pillars
of a I think 6 Pillars of an Effective Marriage, I think, is what it is. There's something about, or or of a of a loving marriage or 6 pillars or something. Anyhow, or 6 pillars of an intimate marriage, something along along those lines. I'd I'd have to look it up again. But anyhow and they went through, and all these things were just these different types of intimacies. This is a financial intimacy and this intimacy and this intimacy and this intimacy.
And that got me to to look, and then I wanted to see what intimacy actually is. And in doing so, I came across I came across a couple different sites, and they talk about all these different types of things, that are different types of intimacy. And then I came across one from a site called Choosing Therapy, and they were cranking out 10 different types of intimacy. And I was like going, holy smokes.
First off, that's a lot of different types of intimacy. And they go through and they talk about some of the ones we that would sound normal, like physical intimacy, emotional intimacy. And then they also have things like the intellectual, spiritual, experiential, social, creative, conflict, aesthetic intimacy, and work intimacy. And some of those are going, how yeah. Oh, I don't know. There's didn't sound
quite right, or those sound like they could be folded into some of the others. You know? And so I wanted to go on ahead and just said, you know what? Let's have some fun. Let's dive through this. I haven't done a series quite quite some time, and I wanna just talk about these different types of intimacies and see if going through them, looking at them, examining them,
if they're real or if they're not real. And if you think we come across one that's real or not, then, hey, I would love to hear you hear from you by posting a comment down in down below on, at the, the show notes. So let's go ahead. Let's get ourselves started. Now let's start off with what what just like the the title says, what in the world is intellectual intimacy? So what is intellectual intimacy?
That from what I've been able to look and grab and granted still I'm still don't have all of my thoughts gathered together to how everything all fits together with the different types of intimacy. But from what I'm reading, and this is just me learning, this is what this series is kinda about is how I go about and learn about the different aspects of how relationships work because they don't
they're not straightforward. They're not just, oh, well, you just do it this way. You just say I love you to your wife, and she says I love you to back, and congratulations y'all are storm stay couple for the rest of your life. It's not that. I mean, I I hope that it's not what you're thinking. You I hope you don't think that it's that easy because if it is you do think that it's that easy, you're gonna be in for a lot of really rough time because
it doesn't. It's not that easy. It's not something that you can just kinda pull out of your head whenever you want. So we you have to you have to work on your different types of intimacy. And intimacy is more than just I love you because there is, yeah, there is the physical intimacy. We as guys, we are physical. That is the love language. The you know, one of the love languages is
physical touch. That's the physical intimacy. We like to have our we like to be touched, not even just so much sexual, but just just a a physical touch is a very intimate, action for us men. If our wife comes along and trails her hand over her shoulder, it's gonna get our attention. The same as if we're not paying attention to what she's saying and she just kinda casually reaches down and and
touches you on the crotch. That's gonna all you don't care what's happening around you. You're going to stop and you're gonna see what the world she wants. It can be a sexual touch. It can be just a just a hug. It can be you offering your arm and your wife takes you by the arm. It's you holding hands. It doesn't have to be a sexual intimacy. And so, you know, we've got that physical intimacy
down. We also have emotional intimacy. We don't wanna sit there and trash the emotional side of our wives because we know our wives are emotional. And, hopefully, our wives fully understand. And I think women are starting to actually grasp the fact that, yes, us men are emotional beings. We get happy, sad, grumpy, angry, frustrated, ashamed. We feel powerless. We feel inadequate.
We feel all these all these besides for being angry at times because angry anger is a lot of times we use it as just a as an emotion that we can feel a little more power in because we are ashamed. Shame is a very disempowering emotion. We don't feel empowered when we have if since that, when we have that feeling, we of shame or or inadequacy, we are very
disempowered. And so we're gonna come up with something that gives us a little more power. And, sadly, we overcompetate a lot of times when we go from from shame into anger. And with anger, we said, oh, well, I better act upon my anger. And so we jive into aggression, and that never works. You never respond according to an emotion. And that's the big problem a lot of us guys do is we respond according to our emotions. So we have that.
So we wanna dive into the next one down, and that is intellectual. What is the intellectual intimacy? And in speaking of intellectual, that is a person who engages in critical thinking, research reflection, or what about the reality of society who proposes solutions for its normative problems? Okay. I'll that whoever you know somebody who is pompous when they write normative, heteronormative or blah blah blah normative or whatever normative. That's
so it's one of those words where you're like, oh, really? Dude, please, you just said normative. It's along the same lines as problematic. That's very problematic. And so but an intellectual. So thinking, and we're that's what we're talking about is your thoughts. How your how intimate are your you and your wife's thoughts together? When you share your thoughts and she shares her thoughts, how are y'all doing together?
That's what we're talking about. So intellectual intimacy is the respect for each other's thoughts and insights. And this is I've sadly, I've think that this type of intimacy is one of the first ones to go when we start down the path of losing our intimacy. We start having those those internal, arguments with the, with each other. So, you know, I don't know if you've ever had it. I typically do. I'll sit there and I will have a a argument with my wife, but it's only in my head. And we get these
these fights going on and, you know, you're showing her what's what's for. You're giving, you know, you're giving your wife the the just the, a a full dressing down. Just blah blah blah. You're just telling her all your thoughts, all your frustrations, all your anger. And then these are important thoughts to have, but the problem that we're having is that we're using it as a means to fantasize about beating our essentially, just emotionally and intellectually just defeating our wife.
And that's one of the reasons why that type of action that we have when we're getting into those if we're in those points where we're just having mental arguments with our wife and we are showing her, you know, our our our intellectual superiority, you're decreasing and destroying the intellectual intimacy that you have with your wife because you will notice that you do not respect her when you see her in person.
One of the greatest ways you could develop intellectual intimacy is when you find yourself having these mental arguments with your wife, stop, and let her win mentally. And it sounds so counterintuitive. It sounds so so off. It's like, well, who who does it matter? It matters to you. Because, again, you're going you've just shown her up one side down the other. You didn't take anything that she was gonna say as as gospel, and you just showed her exactly how wrong everything was.
But intellectually speaking, you basically were just going f you. I don't care what you think. It's not important to me. Your thoughts aren't important. I don't need to hear from you. And because of that, we don't have the intellectual intimacy. We do not respect the thoughts she has. All of a sudden, our wife comes up with this idea and you're just instead of entertaining the idea and hearing it out, you're instantly going,
really? Oh my god. She doesn't have a clue as to what she's talking about. This is terrible. This is horrible. Yada yada yada yada yada. When you don't have intellectual intimacy, you're not gonna seek her out for her thoughts and insights. Yet, that is one of the big things you married your wife for. If you're going to go on to conquer the world together, you have to be able to listen to what her thoughts are. You have to be able to hear what her insights into what the, what is going on.
That's one of the reasons why men, no matter what the the the woke folks, the progressive people of of society wanna try to say, this is why men and women are different, and this is why it is good for men and women to be different. Men, whether you think you're a woman or not, is going to go off and have a different way of processing thoughts, processing a circumstance than a woman who is a woman no matter whether she thinks she is or not.
I mean, this is the reason why so many times if you watch somebody who is, you know, trans oriented, you can kinda pick out you can pick out those who are who are playing as a different sex because they don't respond to stimuli as that sex would. They respond to it as the opposite sex. No matter how much hard they try. I've seen women who have tried to be men, and they all of a sudden are just always dressed to the nines.
Now are all men slobs? No. No. Not all men's are slobs, but we also don't have every last hair in place, and we are buttoned up, and we're immaculate, and we're all accessorized, and we've got the we've got, you know, the little pocket square in our pocket going and it matches our our our our socks, but it doesn't match our tie and, you know, whatever it is, it's all very intentional because we do not have we do not process
information the same way as women do. And so this is why we need to respect that a woman is not going to think like you are. The woman in your life is not going to have the same solution as you are. But when you talk to her and you bring her thoughts into your world, your world your thoughts are going to help change her, and her thoughts are going to change you, and y'all are gonna become better for it. So this is why
intellectual intimacy is important because you're seeking each other's thoughts. You're looking at what you're asking them. You're seeking them out for their opinions on what do you think you should do here? What do you should what shouldn't you do there? And if you find that you're having trouble being intellectually intimate with them to seek out their their their input, then that might be what you need to do is notice when you go. She's she doesn't know what in the hell I'm doing anyhow.
That's when you stop and you go and you talk to her and you ask her and you you accept what it is. She says doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it. Doesn't necessarily mean that what she's going to give you the greatest advice, but she's going to have advice for you. And when you have that intellectual intimacy, you have the ability to stay curious about your wife.
We've talked about several times in the past weeks what being curious and actually having a good deep seated curiosity about what your wife is, what she's about, where she where her thoughts come from, why did she like my wife, found out why she doesn't like to go to church. Has nothing to do with with the religion itself, but it has everything to do with the stepfather her mom married.
This guy was supposed to be a youth pastor, and you have certain, you know, you have certain thoughts about what a youth pastor is. And, no, he didn't sexually abuse her, but he was very demanding and very almost OCD. Maybe he maybe even a bit of narcissism in there where he tried to keep her on her toes, keep her on or, actually, keep her off her toes, keep her knocked back on her on her heels. And because of where her mom met him, she associates that type of that church with with Gary.
And Gary's passed now, so I can talk through as much crap about him as I want and nothing's gonna happen. But he was a guy from one of everything I've understood from her and from from some journals that, Jan had left, her mom, before she passed or after she passed. And it opens it up so you get to see the person actually trying even when you're with a you even though they're your wife and you've been married to them for now 28 years.
There's still points where you're discovering that scared little girl. Just a grown woman trying to protect herself the best that she can. And some of that is, I don't say, talk about Gary. I don't talk about who he is and where what what it is. I just know that I do not go to church because church, you know, that's where Gary's from.
So you stay curious about your wife. When you stay curious and you learn more about her, the more you'll have the opportunity to be able to fall more in love with her. So how do you build intellectual intimacy? This is, you know, what actually, before we do that, let's dive into why would you want to even improve your intellectual intimacy? Well, we've kinda covered a little bit. It allows you to see it it allows you to stay curious with your wife, but it also allows you to have more in-depth
conversations. That's something we all talk about. Right? We wanna have these, you know, have those late night discussions again, where we set up in bed, you know, maybe after a bit of lovemaking set and we continue talking through it into the night. Or maybe it's the discussion that leads up to sex, but you have those more in-depth conversations. You get to know your wife. You get to know her actions. You get to know her thought process.
You get better at communicating with your spouse because you have a better understanding of where her thoughts are going and still delight in the, the instances of when she surprises you with a new thought. And you still explore the, the, the times that she's, the words that she says, you explore her actions and you both are exploring together. She's exploring. She's trying to figure out why you act the way you do, and you're trying to figure out why she acts the way she does. And that is
part of the marriage. That's part of the joy of marriage because you're never going to fully know the person, but you get to discover new little tidbits about them every day if you want. So you get your as you grow, your curiosity draws you into their world even more. So you get to explore a bigger, richer, more complex woman than you even thought.
You also because of all that curiosity and because you're talking to her more and you're and you're getting to know her and you're not judging the fact that she's got the thoughts that she has and you're not, you know, you're not ostracizing her or talking down to her because she has her own thoughts. She's feeling safe. She thinks you're not going to, you know, not going to to kick her out of the out of the club because she had a thought that didn't align with yours.
And so you show her that you're you care about her. You show that she is important to you, which allows for you to have a better, richer, more fulfilling sense of love. This is why it's called an intellectual intimacy. How intimately do you know your wife's thoughts? So how do you build that intellectual intimacy? Well, again, that's it all centers around one of the big things is getting into discussions. Not heated, not not out of desperation. Keep the fight, flight, freeze
out of it. Keep your emotions out of the talk. Just have discussions with each other's philosophies. Why do you believe what you believe? Even if she says, I don't know. That's just how I did it. Well, where did you come up with the thought that that's a good thought? How did they how did you apply that thought that allowed you to come into accepting it more?
You can ask these different questions and you can ask them without being threatening. Well, that's just dumb thought. Where'd you come up with that idiotic thought? Where did you how did you come up with that? I mean, how does that were even worth you know, those thoughts aren't those words, those thoughts that you're having aren't gonna help you. That's you casting that judgment. That's you throwing blame, throwing accusations at your wife by without even saying, well, you're an idiot.
You're acknowledging she has her own thoughts. You're acknowledging that she has a brain and that she uses it and that she uses it well because it's kept her alive this long. So get the discussions, learn about her, be fascinated with what she says, because that fascination leads into more curiosity. Something else that you can do is with that curiosity is just ask questions. You don't have to you don't even have to share your side of the discussion,
which sounds really weird. Well, how are you supposed to get more intimate if you don't get to share? Because she'll learn about you in other ways. She'll learn about you. She'll ask questions about it. It may come back, you know, next week. Might come back 2 years down. But she'll get back to it, and she will ask you. But get curious. Ask her questions, and ask questions about the answers that she gives. Ask more questions and come to understand her even more.
The more questions you ask, the better that you're going to you're going to understand her, and then you're gonna be able to grow. And another way that you can actually build intellectual intimacy is try learning something together. What is something she's been wanting to learn? Me and my wife, we went through weaving or not weaving, but, yarn making, doing spinning at essentially, it's a spinning class except we weren't on bicycles, we were using drop spindles. We learned to make yarn that way.
It was fun. It was a good time. I had a great time learning, and it was easy. As long as you learned how to spin and stretch things out the right way, everything worked beautifully. If you went too fast, it would fall. You ever spin drop spindle would drop. But try something. Try learning together. Learn a language.
That way, you have somebody 1, you have somebody you can speak with. 2, you know, you might she may have some way of helping associate words with you that works a lot better than what you're trying to do. I'm trying to learn Italian right now, and that's a there's some I see a lot of associated words, but I bet you if there was I was having able to have conversations with somebody else, I probably have some more words associated.
But if you wanna be able to ask more questions, I do have a a PDF that you can actually download and build your own intellectual in some intimacy. And it's it's essentially what it is. It's 800 questions that I've put together. There's 20 pages of 40 questions, and they are, some are very surface level, some are a little deeper. And they just are to get you started asking the questions and learning more about what it is you're wanting to wanting to know.
Get break into something with what your wife is and is doing and is wanting to know. And that way, you can actually learn more about her. You can develop that intellectual intimacy because intellectual intimacy is actually very important. Learn about your wife. Learn about what it is that she likes to think about and how what she likes to, to come to understand. Because when you do that, your life, your world is going to become better because of it.
So, guys, with that, I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna wrap this up. I do have a quick question for you or a quick ask, and that is I am I've got a a package that I am putting together. I'm trying I'm trying out a couple different, little products that I'm think that y'all may have some interest in. And it's not gonna cost you anything, but I would just I'm curious about if you wanted to know a couple things
about your wife. If you wanted to improve your relationship with your wife, what are a couple things 2 things that you would like to know? And in doing so, if you could shoot me in the, go to or not shoot me an email, but you could shoot me an email with a response, brian with a [email protected], and just put in there, that, or you can go to relax mail.comforward/helpme, all one word, and just answer that question.
What are 2 things that you wanna know that help you that would help you make your allow your relationship to become better? That response would help me tremendously. Just I wanna make sure I'm not forgetting something that's highly important. So with that, guys, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. If you have any questions, comments, or anything like that, please feel free to shoot me shoot me an email. Again, that's brian with a [email protected].
Or if you would like, you can also drop a, drop me a a DM at any of on any of the social media sites. And speaking of social media, if you'd like what you're hearing, you're liking this, this this, the schedule, this this series, please share this out with on Facebook, on Twitter, on, Mastodon, wherever it is you like to go and you like to spend time with other other men.
Share this with them and let them know, hey. There is a site out there called the relaxed male, and, guys, this is this is making my my relationship better every single time I listen to it. I'm learning something new, learning something more powerful. And that way, that helps these other guys to also have amazing relationships too. So, guys, with that, I wanna say thanks very much for listening. We'll talk to y'all next week. Till then. Bye.